"Russiagate is part of the establishment parties' strategy to silence any discussion of international relations outside the bipartisan consensus of endless war and global military domination. How else could they take trillions of dollars for war while American communities crumble?"

Not surprised by the timing of the release of this poll here. From what I'm reading and hearing, there's going to be a huge concentrated retaliation against the US dollar coming. Economic retaliation or possible the US got wind of this and was just making a pre emptive tarrif hit on many countries?

Either way, the countries so far planning to dump the US petro buck are Russia, Turkey Iran. and Germany. I suspect that China is in there as well and wouldn't rule out India?

This subject really deserves it's own thread because it's too far seperated from this one. Perhaps you can pick up on it NDPP?

Hi Mr Magoo. Yes this is a large attack on the US dollar. I only understand the simple version of how this works. About 10 years ago or so, the US dollar was the main currency standard around the world. When every country buys and sells goods from to another country, it is done in US dollars. And the US makes a profit from this. Even though they literally only just print the money. Apparently this gives the US a huge huge huge economic advantage several ways and it's supposed to be one of the root causes of all the conflicts in North Africa/ Middle East and is central to US imperialism.

But China started to change this when their economy started challenging the US say 5-10 years ago? They offered their trading parties the opportunity to ditch the US dollar and trade directly. This would result in 1-2% reduction in cost for both trading parties. Naturally this pisses off the US monopoly on currency. And rumour has it the US started the Arab spring to slow this errosion eating at the US dollar or was an attempt to stop it completely due to the fact that oil trading is the main prop for the US dollar.

Now I don't understand how all of this works, just a simple version.

A speculation I have is that the US backed Arab spring has turned out to be a huge failure and has only had the opposite intended affect. The damage to the US credibility and huge cost to their economy has allowed China to walk right in and create opportunities in vast regions including almost every region of the world. Also India is now more than eager to get rid of the US dollar because they see it for what it is, cutting into India's profit. But India seems to be playing a couple different sides or I haven't read enough on India to get a solid grip? But they're clearly still wanting to buy Iranian oil using direct Ruppee trading

And going back to my other earlier comment, from what I'm seeing on Chinese news and from a few different articles links, it looks like there may be a concentrated dump in the US dollar.

Sorry but this is serious thread drift and really this subject should have it's own thread,

"Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport said on Tuesday that Americans have come to reject the idea that President Trump did anything criminal with regards to Russian interference in the 2016 election. 'A lot of Americans have kind of dismissed the idea that he [Trump] colluded to the extent that he did something illegal,' Newport told Hill TV's Joe Concha on 'What America's Thinking.'

"Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport said on Tuesday that Americans have come to reject the idea that President Trump did anything criminal with regards to Russian interference in the 2016 election. 'A lot of Americans have kind of dismissed the idea that he [Trump] colluded to the extent that he did something illegal,' Newport told Hill TV's Joe Concha on 'What America's Thinking.'

So, are you suggesting that whatever the majority or Americans believe must be the truth, or what?

Nonsense. Not only is NATO expanding but Trump has successfully extracted even more funding from its members. Furthermore, the real damage to the EU has been the anti-Russian sanctions which have destroyed trade relations between Europe and Russia, not to mention the consequences of America's wars. No surprise to find an American arguing for its continuing supremacy and demand we accept its enemies as our own.

"The Trump administration has brought US foreign policy to the brink of crisis, if it has not already tipped into one. There is little room to argue otherwise...The bitter reality is that US foreign policy has no definable objective other than blocking the initiatives of others because they stand in the way of the further expansion of US global interests...The neoliberal crusade must proceed. Our market-driven 'rules-based' order is still advanced as the only way out of our planet's impasses...'Right now, our job is to create quagmires until we get what we want,' an administration official told the Washington Post's David Ignatius in August. Can you think of a blunter confession of intellectual bankruptcy? I can't."

President Trump is Tougher on Russia in 18 Months Than Obama in 8 Years

Jen Kerns has served as a GOP strategist and writer for the U.S. presidential debates for FOX News. She previously served as communications director and spokeswoman for the California Republican Party, the Colorado recalls over gun control, and the Prop. 8 battle over marriage which went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

And to think I thought The Hill, since it is always posted here, would be preferable. I keep forgetting Russophobes' chump-world: All Democrats always speak truth and all Repugs lie, even when they don't.

"...But the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one. At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium one..."

"...But the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one. At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium one..."

"One of the key talking points of the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory is that Manafort served Kremlin interests in Ukraine. Mueller's superseding indictment today shows new reasons why that's false; that in fact Manafort pushed a pro-West agenda in Ukraine. Follow along here..."

"...Manafort admitted to engineering a scheme in which a front company was set up in Brussels to conceal Ukrainian government payments to his own lobbying firm and several others, including the Mercury Group, a bipartisan operation, the Podesta Group, run by Tony Podesta, brother of Clinton's campaign chairman, and the Skadden Arps law firm, in the person of Gregory Craig, a White House counsel under Obama and a defense lawyer during the impeachment of Bill Clinton..."

Lisa Page Reveals FBI Had No Evidence of Collusion for 'Russiagate' Probe

"By the time special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed, the FBI had found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 US presidential election, according to agency lawyer Lisa Page..."

"US House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) appeared on 'Sunday Morning Futures' with host Maria Bartiromo and stated his intentions to make all the depositions taken in the Russiagate investigation public before the midterm elections. Nunes also said Americans deserve this level of transparency for an investigation that has obstructed the Trump administration's agenda and a large number of Americans 'have drank this Russia Kool-Aid' as a result..."

"Bob Woodward said that in his two years of investigating for his new book, 'Fear' he found no evidence of collusion or espionage between Trump and Russia. Woodward said he looked for it 'hard' and yet turned up nothing..."

'The British government 'expressed grave concerns' to the US government over the declassification and release of material related to the Trump-Russia investigation according to the NYT. President Trump ordered a wide swath of materials 'immediately' declassifed 'without redaction' on Monday, only to change his mind later in the week by allowing the DOJ Inspector General to review the materials first.

The Times reports that the UK's concern was over material which 'includes direct references to conversations between American law enforcement officials and Christopher Steeele, the former MI6 agent who compiled the infamous 'Steele Dossier'..."

"I think Russiagate will go down as left-liberals' worst political mistake since fittingly, '90s Clinton neoliberalism. After many losses, culminating in 2016's humiliation, we embraced a conspiracy theory that Trump conspired with Russia and championed bureaucrats, Intel a saviors."

"The weakness of the Left in the United States is so extreme that the ruling class has to invent a 'menace' to the prevailing oligarchial order: The Russians, whose phantom agents are said to wage a twilight struggle to undermine faith in US institutions. Since no one believes that US leftists [Like the Canadian, NDP variety] have either the will or capacity to challenge the corporate regime, the Russians, have to fill the role of internal as well as external enemy - a daunting task on a meager Facebook budget of only $100,000..."

"Congressional investigators have confirmed that a top FBI official met with Democratic Party lawyers to talk about allegations of Donald Trump-Russia collusion weeks before the 2016 election, and before the bureau secured a search-warrant targeting Trump's campaign. Former FBI general counsel James Baker met during the 2016 season with at least one attorney from Perkins Coie, the Democratic National Committee's private law firm.

That's the firm used by the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign to secretly pay research firm GPS and Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence operative, to compile a dossier of uncorroborated raw intelligence alleging Trump and Moscow were colluding to hijack the presidential election. The dossier, though mostly unverified, was then used by the FBI as the main evidence seeking a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant targeting the Trump campaign in the final days of the campaign..."

"Congressional investigators have confirmed that a top FBI official met with Democratic Party lawyers to talk about allegations of Donald Trump-Russia collusion weeks before the 2016 election, and before the bureau secured a search-warrant targeting Trump's campaign. Former FBI general counsel James Baker met during the 2016 season with at least one attorney from Perkins Coie, the Democratic National Committee's private law firm.

That's the firm used by the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign to secretly pay research firm GPS and Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence operative, to compile a dossier of uncorroborated raw intelligence alleging Trump and Moscow were colluding to hijack the presidential election. The dossier, though mostly unverified, was then used by the FBI as the main evidence seeking a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant targeting the Trump campaign in the final days of the campaign..."

John F. Solomon is an American media executive and columnist. He is currently vice president of digital video and an opinion contributor for The Hill.[1] He is known primarily for his tenure as an executive and editor-in-chief at The Washington Times.[2] He has been accused of biased reporting in favor of conservatives, and of repeatedly manufacturing faux scandals.[3][4]

Everyone here posts from The Hill, not to mention NYT, WaPo and The Guardian. Are you suggesting only purely pro Democrat propaganda is acceptable? I do not share this view and consider the US duopoly as evil on one side as the other. Furthermore, I can find multiple variations of this story across a range of sources . You can't wish away the truth just because you find it detrimental to your apparently chosen team. I notice you only ever make these comments on my posts, never the Louise Mensch posters etc.

"For The Times and Post and other mainstream media outlets, Russiagate has become it seems, a kind of cult journalism that no counter evidence or analysis can dint, and thus itself is a major contributing factor to the new and more dangerous Cold War. Still worse, what began nearly two years ago as complaints about Russian 'meddling' in the US presidential campaign has become for the New Yorker and other publications an accusation that the Kremlin actually put Trump in the White House. For this reckless charge, with its inherent contempt for the good sense of American voters, there is no convincing evidence - nor any precedent in American history..."

"On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Max Blumenthal, a journalist and bestselling author whose latest book is 'The 51 Day Wars Ruin and Resistance in Gaza,' the senior editor of Grayzone Project, and co-host of the podcast Moderate Rebels.

Indicted Trump campaign official Rick Gates apparently requested proposals in 2016 from an Israeli company to create fake online identities, to use social media manipulation, and to gather intelligence to help defeat Donald Trump's Republican primary challenges and, later, Hillary Clinton. The company is staffed by former Israeli intelligence officers..."

"The only things Russiagate accomplished were expanding the military, manufacturing consent for internet censorship, smearing all dissenting political speech as Russian psyops, and making everyone dumber. Everyone who helped advance it should be mocked and marginalized forever."

Russiagate was not bullshit. Why should we take one false extreme over the other in this story?

We can believe both that the Russians were interfering to create instability AND that the US is a global threat to peace AND that the US is the greatest threat to Canada. Why must we assume either side is innocent?

I do not think that Russians intended to help Trump for his sake. Their interest in him was that he is a force of instability - once they realized this he became an objective of their campaign.

This is not a binary issue: the US is terrible. That the Russians are doing something terrible themselves does not change that. It is not even about which is worse -- why does it matter?

Why does it matter which side the Russians were interfering to help? There are well supported claims that it was all sides -- they were promoting division until they realized just how awful he could be and that he could get elected. The fact that the US has a record of being the state with the greatest level of interference outside since the colonial powers occupied countries does not excuse Russia's tactics. Even the fact that Russia may have done this due to previous aggression, does not make what Russia did okay. (Russia was turned into a hostile country when it could have turned the other way by the actions of the US, Europe and NATO -- they could have been welcomed when they were trying to engage instead of being attacked and threatened.)

I know this. But it does not make them not a threat now or excuse what they have done.

The fact that the greatest threat of election interference, and the greatest examples of it come from within, does not make their efforts okay.

I don't really give much of a crap about the US now since I do not consider their electoral process as worth recognition or redeemable, but Canada is also vulnerable. It has to be concerned about threats from within in terms of interference, it has to be concerned about distortions of the process through financing, and it has to be concerned about interference from outside.

Pretending the Russians did not interfere in elections is not good for Canada, just becuase the Russians are not the greatest threat from outside to Canada (that threat comes from the US). The experience with how the Russians did it exposes vulnerabilities. The motive of the Russians is actually less of a threat to Canada than the one from the US. They were seeking advantage from discord. Certainly the Russians could be a threat to Canada in the next election -- even if it is a much smaller threat than that coming from the US.

The threat from the US is also different: The Russians wanted advatnage by creating trouble. The US will likely use some of the same techniques to change the result in order to make the Canadian government more to its liking. What the Russians did may have been dirty but the technique they used against the US, if employed by US actors against Canada, threaten Canada's independence (whatever is left of it).

Pretending this did not happen is not going to help this. Taking sides is not either -- the techniques were cheap and can be used not just by a country whose leadership is hostile, but by any group within the country or outside.

Canada should be terrified about what the US right wing learned about this and how they might employ what they learned against us. So pretending that it was all bullshit is a very bad idea. Don't even think that the Russians invented this -- the US used this type of tacic before, even if they were offended that it was used against them later. The US has more money, a greater interest, and more groups independent of their government capable of doing this to Canada. Plus Canada is an easier target becuase we are a smaller market.